5/8/2010 High Winds and Traffic School

I got up with every intention of going back to bed early this morning. It was just a little before seven and I really didn’t see any need to stay up since I had the house to myself. A few minutes later I was snuggled back under the covers and I could hear a TV. Darn, Bob left the TV on and it went to one of those loud commercials. Darn it…now I’m UP! It was then I took notice of the wind.

The wind has to be blowing at 100 miles an hour! Ok, ok, that is an exaggeration but I would guess its blowing every bit of 30 – 40 mph with gusts to 50. It is just HOWLING! The 5th wheel is shaking the wind is blowing so hard.

Wanna guess who isn’t fishing? Wanna guess who isn’t a happy camper? I feel so bad for him. He has been looking forward to this tournament since before we left Arizona. There was a day when Bob would have gone anyway, back when he could take the truck on the beach so he could have shelter to get out of the weather. Ever since we’ve gone dually our truck on the beach days are over. The sand is too soft and deep here for a dually to go on. It probably wouldn’t be a problem on the hard packed sand on the Outer Banks of North Carolina but its out of the question here.

Around 10:30 the wind died down a bit, enough that you would feel comfortable going outside. Bob decided to take a walk over to see if anyone was fishing and what they were doing.

I thought I’d take advantage of the quiet and start on the Traffic School project.

When I really started working on this project yesterday I was given a list of, I’ll say 20 traffic schools I could have picked from. I went to the first three websites and found that this was going to cost nearly as much as the original ticket but at least the three points wouldn’t be put against Bob’s license and we wouldn’t have to worry about insurance rates going up. I was determined to check them all out in case, just in case, I could find one considerably less expen…. CHEAPER!

The fourth one on the list made me laugh and I thought it was someone’s idea of a joke. Seriously, what would your reaction be to “IMPROV TRAFFIC SCHOOL” I’m serious. I went to the web site and sure enough Traffic School with comic relief! And you’ll never guess….$11.00 cheaper to boot! I had to make sure this was on the up and up so I called the 800 number and was put on hold for the next available representative. Did I listen to music to pass the time? No, Did I listen to a commercial about the traffic school? No. I listened to comedians tell jokes about driving and accidents and speeding, I kid you not, After waiting just a few minutes a rep got on the phone with me and told me all about the course NOT mentioning anything about the test being taken anywhere other than our home computer.

I decided to go with this one since it was on the list from court system in the State of Arizona and I was going to save us eleven big ones.

So I get a pad of paper, several pens, a Pepsi, turned the TV onto a station I wanted and proceeded to take the Improv Traffic School course.

First thing, I watched a video, a comedian telling more driving jokes. I had 15 minutes to read the first of ten sections. It was all about how driving is a privilege and not a right. Lots of statistics were given and I’m writing furiously in my own shorthand hoping that Bob isn’t going to have a hard time memorizing all these numbers. What I should have been hoping is that I was going to be able READ the chicken scratch on the paper. So fourteen and half minutes later I get to the last section and its the review section. It’s three sentences long. That’s it. Test questions will come from those three sentences.

Now I was warned that I could be asked what color shirt the guy in the picture/graphic was wearing as part of the quiz after each chapter. They want to make sure you do in fact read the course and not just the review.

The course is certainly written with some levity.

The first chapter quiz? Two questions. The first one was what kind of car was in the picture and I was given a choice of 4 makes of car. I checked my 3 pages of notes and found it was a BMW. The next question was “Driving is a ___________.” It wasn’t too hard to figure out they wanted the answer privilege. Quiz done. The entire first chapter took 16 minutes.

I wasn’t sure about the quiz only being two questions long. I called the 800 # again and asked if it was in fact 2 questions long. Yep.

The second chapter was a tad longer and the review section had more to it. I wrote as fast I could because after the timer runs out you have maybe another few minutes and then you are logged out if you don’t click on taking the quiz. Once again I answered what I now call the trick questions and one from the review section. Every question is multiple choice.

I logged out and took the time to rewrite both of the review sections so that it was neat enough for Bob to read. Once you log out after taking the quiz you can’t go back. I had to figure out this chicken scratch while it was still fresh in my mind.

When I went into Chapter 3, Signs, Signals and Road Markings, I happen to notice something that I hadn’t noticed before. Click here to copy course material to PDF format for printing. Yeah! I don’t have to write all this out!

Check out Workers Present. (double click to enlarge if you need to)

This one made me laugh too.

Of course you have PIT STOPS to read too. These are traffic jokes!

The next chapter had to do with paying attention to what you are doing. Read #’s 7, 5 and 1.

I couldn’t log back in after the 3rd session for some reason so once again called the 800#. The fellow was very helpful and was able to fix it on his end. It seems the timer was stuck even though it showed all zeroes on my end. I asked another question and thanked him for his time.

As soon as we hung up I realized I should have asked about taking the test at the UPS store or somewhere else but then figured that was something he probably wouldn’t tell me anyway. I called right back figuring I wouldn’t get the same representative since I hadn’t talked to the same person twice yet. I decided I would pretend lie and tell the rep that I was just shopping for a traffic school and was wondering if the entire test was taken at home as I heard some weren’t. Darn if I didn’t get the same guy! I didn’t want him to know it was me so I disguised my voice. He asked what state I was from and I said Texas (legally, I am!) Now, I’m sorry, but I have to admit that I had absolutely no business trying fake a Texas accent. Halfway through I’m thinking to myself, “Snookie, you just spent 2 weeks in Texas and not once did you hear this twangy, backwoods, hillbilly voice that you are trying to pass off.” Now that I think about it, I did hear this strange noise from the other end of the phone and I’m pretty sure that fellow recognized my voice just as he was taking a swig from his can and that was soda coming out of his nose as he tried to stifle his laugh.

I’d had enough, I’ll finish the course tomorrow.